


And He Would Fly

by PiercdFromWithin



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:18:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1659509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiercdFromWithin/pseuds/PiercdFromWithin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ramsay Snow/Bolton has been captured, tried, and sacrificed to the Red God.  Theon Greyjoy's time is coming to an end.  Asha and Arya/Jeyne have trouble accepting this, but Theon feels he deserves his fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And He Would Fly

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this today while on Jury Duty. It's probably full of mistakes. The idea of Theon being at peace with dying while his sister & Jeyne/Arya cannot handle it appeals to me. Theon's plight makes me sad. He deserves an honorable death. Will he get it?

And He Would Fly

The last of Ramsay Bolton's screams still echoed in his ears as the fire continued to savage what remained of his body, but Theon Greyjoy felt no different. The hideous chanting had subsided about the time the Bastard of Bolton's spittle-spraying curses had given way to shrieking, but "for the night is dark and full of terrors" seemed to resonate somewhere deep within his mind. The night held few terrors to match the black deeds of the man whose body sagged from the stake within the collapsing pyre. 

The rag-tag, starving, half-frozen remains of Stannis Baratheon's army had soundly defeated Roose Bolton's Northmen at Winterfell and captured his legitimized bastard before setting up camp within its hundred-foot wall. Lord Bolton himself had escaped to the Dreadfort along with some Ryswells and other decayed Northern lords, but the majority of Stannis' army had chased after them and word of their defeat and capture was expected within days. Ramsay had been tried for his crimes, most especially the forced marriage and subsequent death by starvation of Lady Hornwood. While Theon was forced to testify as to Ramsay's multitudinous sins, his own mutilation and mental ruin were not among the horrors for which he was convicted.

None of this mattered to the man who had spent months a prisoner of the Dreadfort and Winterfell being tortured as "Reek", who had escaped only to be re-captured and handed over to Stannis for more torture. The questions of his interrogators had all blurred into one, and it was not the question that still tortured Theon. Had his months of torture, the systematic fragmentation of mind and body, meant anything at all? Once Winterfell was taken, the active interrogation had ceased, but the Turncloak was only spared for an eventual place of sacrifice in R'hollor's fires. Theon did not ponder the irony of his desperate flight from Winterfell with the Bastard's child bride landing him back in the place where he had spent over half of his life as a captive. To him, it was only fitting that his story should end on the castle yard.

Tomorrow, he was to burn.

Asha Greyjoy, the fierce sister who loved him in her harsh way, had tried to bargain for a proper Northern execution for him when it was obvious no royal pardon was coming even though he had saved Arya Stark, now Arya Bolton. To be beheaded as a traitor would have been a mercy, but mercy had not been a part of Theon's existence for too long. He was not surprised that he was to burn. He had never taken the easy way in life. Asha had offered to steal enough dreamwine to render him insensate for the end. Lady Arya Bolton, really the steward's daughter Jeyne Poole but nobody was to know that until he was dead, had argued most eloquently on his behalf that he had saved her from far worse than death at Ramsay's hands even though her broken ribs suffered when they had flown off the cyclopean curtain wall of Winterfell had made speaking painful. She had offered to save the milk of the poppy she was given for her injuries for him so he would not feel the fire lapping at his wasted body. 

He had refused both their offers. 

He felt he deserved the pain for his part in the fall of Winterfell, the deaths of the miller's two boys, and whatever dread fate had befallen Bran and Rickon Stark. He knew he deserved to die screaming just as Ramsay had done tonight for having betrayed his best friend and truest brother, Robb Stark, the fallen King in the North. He faced his death calmly, for his most fervent prayer from when he was Reek, from when he was a ghost at Winterfell, was to come true. He might not die with a blade in his hand, but he would die as Theon.

Tonight, his sister and the girl everyone called Lady Arya had accompanied him to witness the end of the monster who had rolled his days and nights into indistinguishable pain and debasement, though once Ramsay's shrieks began to rend the night Asha had turned away from her little brother and trudged through the thigh-deep drifts of snow back to the main hall. He imagined that it was tears and not wind-borne smoke that had reddened her eyes. Rather, Theon knew she was imagining her little brother mounted on a stake above the flames and melting with his flesh into screams. He did not blame her for turning away or for leaving him. The little steward's daughter had stayed beside him, her arm around his waist as tears froze on her cheeks and the rest of her frostbite-blackened nose became increasingly red. Her brown eyes were luminous as she watched Ramsay try to wrench his thick body free of the chains holding him to the stake.

Was little Jeyne moaning in horror or pleasure as the Bastard's skin crackled and sloughed off his bones? Theon hoped she could still feel horror at anything else after her ordeal with the man she had married in the guise of a girl she had mocked short years before. The bruises Ramsay had gifted his 13-year-old bride might have faded, but that was only skin. Theon knew intimately that what lies beneath the skin is far more fragile and it never heals once exposed.

Theon realized that Jeyne's earlier silent tears of relief had given way to soft weeping as she looked at him. He raised his maimed and manacled hands, gently wiping her tears with his only remaining index finger. 

"Shh, my lady," he murmured, not bothering to try to hide his broken and missing teeth from her as he spoke to her as he did when speaking to anyone else, even his sister. His voice was withered, as if it had begun to decay. "The Monster is dead. He cannot hurt you anymore. You should go inside and get out of the cold."

Jeyne shook her head. Theon knew that she was crying for him, that her tears dripped off the black tip of her nose in anticipation of his death. That he made the girl cry again stabbed his hollow gut. He was unworthy of her tears. Her eyes fixed on his, deep brown capturing the changing blues of an ocean by night. "Come inside with me, Theon. Come get warm."

He glanced up at the twisted form atop the pyre one last time, as if to reassure himself that it was done, before turning away. He was curiously numb - he did not feel free. Jeyne never took her arm from around his waist, and he felt almost absurdly grateful for her support. The remains of his feet had gone numb, and he did not relish tripping and falling in front of these men who despised him.

As they slowly picked their way across the yard, slowly because he was weak and the missing toes caused him to totter like a drunk or broken old man, voices floated to him, disembodied and ghostly through the wind-whipped falling snow. Most were tinged with malice. His condition did not elicit much sympathy among the men at retaken Winterfell.

"Turncloak."

"That girl was the Bastard's whore."

"No, that be Lady Arya Stark, she wot was 'is wife. This whole place be 'ers, since the Young Wolf was murthered and the Turncloak kill't 'er brothers."

After the last, the newly-widowed little girl whispered in his ear, "Why have you not told them the boys escaped?"

Theon bowed his head and wrung his hands. 

"If they yet live, they are safer where they are so long as Lord Roose and his ilk live."

"But if you told the King, perhaps Stannis would not execute you!" 

Jeyne's sweet naïveté amused Theon, but the Bastard had whipped, raped, and flayed any laughter from his body. 

"Jeyne, Jeyne, He needs these Northern lords, and these Northern lords have demanded my life for my betrayal," Theon replied, making an effort to keep any harshness out of his voice by making a sing-song of her name. 

His own voice, "Jeyne, Jeyne, it rhymes with pain," bounced in the space behind his eyes. No, that was no longer the case. "Jeyne rhymes with never again."

Jeyne had suffered enough and her loyalty to him, even though (and he shuddered remembering) he had participated in too much of her torment, was touching. Sometimes at night, she would come down to the main hall and sit with him, the two survivors of old Winterfell, neither of whom truly belonged to it. When he called himself less than a beast and tried to explain how he was unworthy to share the air she breathed, she would remind him that together they had flown. But even when they flew he had hurt her, breaking her fragile ribs when he landed atop her in the drifted snow so far below. She never said they fell. To her, they flew.

Even though his tone was gentle, at least as gentle as his croaking voice could be, her face fell. "Perhaps he would grant you a merciful death if he knew you did not kill them."

Theon could not bring himself to tell her that, for him, any death was merciful. She would not have believed him while Ramsay's cries were so fresh.

When they finally reached the newly restored great hall, the air was thick with the smoke of burning green wood and redolent of the sweat and effluvia of men and beasts. He stamped the snow off his boots, biting back the scream of pain elicited by the impact of the floor with his partly-frozen, ruined feet while Jeyne unclasped his cloak and shook off the snow. 

"Thank you, Lady Arya," he rasped, keeping the mockery from his voice. She did not deserve to be burdened with that Theon on this night.

Jeyne did not respond as she led him up to the dais, though he noticed that soundless tears were streaking her cheeks. Once they climbed up, she attached his manacles to the chain affixed to the wall in the corner behind the head table before he had a chance to wipe her tears again. Looking out, he saw Asha sitting with Qarl the Maid, deep in a conversation. She kept gesturing violently and he had his head down, the look of a man defeated. Theon supposed she must be angry that he would not live to contest the Kingsmoot. Their eyes met for only a second before Asha turned her angular face away. It hurt that his sister still could not even bear to look at him.

He carefully lowered himself to the floor, his joints and muscles creaking a noisy protest. Even though Stannis fed his prisoner well enough, Theon's body was scarcely starting to heal. Jeyne sat beside him, and he was glad he had been allowed a bath (he had been roughly scrubbed until the partially melted snow in which he was being cleaned had turned pink with the blood from the wounds he was too afraid to count, if that could be called bathing) so Jeyne would not be offended being in his proximity, though she had never complained about his smell. Not even before they jumped to their achingly brief freedom.

He was wondering whether Asha might come tonight after the hall fell silent and slide a blade between his ribs straight into his heart to spare him the agony of burning when he felt warm breath against his cheek then the quick press of soft but chilled lips. His head snapped around. 

"Why'd you do that?"

Jeyne blushed, and Theon thought that in that moment Jeyne was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, even though her black-tipped nose was running and mingled with the tears that left shiny trails down her pink cheeks, and her brown eyes were red-rimmed from crying. She did not answer though her lips were trembling as if trying to expel words that would not come. Instead of speaking, she kissed his other cheek even more quickly than the first and he could feel the wetness of her tears on her lips. He scooted back away from her into the corner.

"Go away, Arya. Leave me to myself."

Theon regretted the words even as he was saying them. He watched as the girl's face crumpled, the colour draining from her cheeks just as quickly as it had risen. He tried reaching for her, but his wrists were chained to the wall. He was ashamed when she scrambled to her feet and hurried off the dais with her head down. She had not looked so dejected even when sitting silently shaking in her bedroom after one of the endless nights of Ramsay.

He thought he heard her mumble, "I love you," but he could not be sure.

Watching her awkwardly flee, he sucked air through his broken teeth. Why did the battered little girl care about him? He was not nobody - he was a man, but he still saw he was a craven. He deserved the hated name of Turncloak. He had not protected her from Ramsay. Still, she had tried to save him. She told knights and lords that Theon Greyjoy had picked her up and they flew from Winterfell's outer wall, that he stole her from the debauched husband who left the tooth-print scars they could see on her neck and shoulders, saving her life. She had stood up to a king and told him that he was wrong about Theon. Jeyne Poole was braver than them all. It was not right for her to scuttle out of the room like she did not belong, so he spoke up. "Lady Arya, you must remember your name. Remember who you are."

What he said would not have meant a thing to anyone else, but at his words Jeyne stopped short and turned to look at him. Theon thought that, in that moment, she saw something other than the broken man he was, that she saw through his straggly white hair and the sallow skin sagging thin and scarred off his prominent bones. In her haunted brown eyes and the curve of her lips, he thought he detected that she saw in him the hero she had proclaimed him to be to anyone who would listen to her. Looking at him and smiling, she straightened up and stood tall before turning back toward the door. The steward's daughter walked out, head high and narrow shoulders back, her soft brown hair swaying behind her, looking every bit the highborn lady she would no longer have to pretend to be after tomorrow.

Theon was left alone to lean against the wall and think. Maybe Asha would come for him tonight with her axe or a dagger. Maybe one of the Northmen would finally come and take personal vengeance, ending the mockery of existence that remained of his life. If not, he would be burned on the pyre after tomorrow's sun set. His fate was determined, and that was a comfort. He had so few comforts that he appreciated the certainty of his death. 

Even in this horribly altered Winterfell with its scorched black walls, bright new timbers, and overwhelming presence of men and horses with their melded stench, he could not help but recall the time before King Robert came to visit, before Jaime Lannister threw Bran from the tower, before Lord Stark went to King's Landing, before Robb called his banners and went to war. He had fought his best friend with blunted swords and perfected his technique with the bow he would never shoot again in this very yard in which he would be given to the conflagration. He smiled as he lost himself in the memories of his youth, unafraid.

For what is death to a man who had flown?

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, the ending is open. I hope that Asha and Qarl are plotting a way to free him and secret him to the Iron Islands where he will undo the Kingsmoot then retire with his poor, mad mother on Harlaw.
> 
> He probably burns.


End file.
